Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

of venereal love are incomparably more attractive,
valid, and efficacious than words, she beckoned to
him to come along with her to her house; which when
he had done, she drew him aside to a privy room, and
then made a most lively alluring sign unto him to
show that the game did please her. Whereupon,
without any more advertisement, or so much as the uttering
of one word on either side, they fell to and bringuardized
it lustily.

The other cause of my being averse from consulting
with dumb women is, that to our signs they would make
no answer at all, but suddenly fall backwards in a
divarication posture, to intimate thereby unto us the
reality of their consent to the supposed motion of
our tacit demands. Or if they should chance
to make any countersigns responsory to our propositions,
they would prove so foolish, impertinent, and ridiculous,
that by them ourselves should easily judge their thoughts
to have no excursion beyond the duffling academy.
You know very well how at Brignoles, when the religious
nun, Sister Fatbum, was made big with child by the
young Stiffly-stand-to’t, her pregnancy came
to be known, and she cited by the abbess, and, in a
full convention of the convent, accused of incest.
Her excuse was that she did not consent thereto,
but that it was done by the violence and impetuous
force of the Friar Stiffly-stand-to’t.
Hereto the abbess very austerely replying, Thou naughty
wicked girl, why didst thou not cry, A rape, a rape!
then should all of us have run to thy succour.
Her answer was that the rape was committed in the
dortour, where she durst not cry because it was a
place of sempiternal silence. But, quoth the
abbess, thou roguish wench, why didst not thou then
make some sign to those that were in the next chamber
beside thee? To this she answered that with her
buttocks she made a sign unto them as vigorously as
she could, yet never one of them did so much as offer
to come to her help and assistance. But, quoth
the abbess, thou scurvy baggage, why didst thou not
tell it me immediately after the perpetration of the
fact, that so we might orderly, regularly, and canonically
have accused him? I would have done so, had the
case been mine, for the clearer manifestation of mine
innocency. I truly, madam, would have done the
like with all my heart and soul, quoth Sister Fatbum,
but that fearing I should remain in sin, and in the
hazard of eternal damnation, if prevented by a sudden
death, I did confess myself to the father friar before
he went out of the room, who, for my penance, enjoined
me not to tell it, or reveal the matter unto any.
It were a most enormous and horrid offence, detestable
before God and the angels, to reveal a confession.
Such an abominable wickedness would have possibly
brought down fire from heaven, wherewith to have burnt
the whole nunnery, and sent us all headlong to the
bottomless pit, to bear company with Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram.

You will not, quoth Pantagruel, with all your jesting,
make me laugh. I know that all the monks, friars,
and nuns had rather violate and infringe the highest
of the commandments of God than break the least of
their provincial statutes. Take you therefore
Goatsnose, a man very fit for your present purpose;
for he is, and hath been, both dumb and deaf from the
very remotest infancy of his childhood.